NY Times, Sept 21, 1995. Fraud Can Flourish Without the Internet To the Editor: Your Sept. 19 front-page article on the discovery by two University of California graduate students of a flaw in Netscape, the software used for purchases over the Internet's World Wide Web, raises a number of obvious questions. First, who needs high tech to perpetrate fraud? Any unscrupulous commercial employee could use or sell your credit card number without employing technology. Every time you hand your card to a waiter in a restaurant, it disappears for several minutes. The department store clerks and gas station attendants you deal with also have access to your card number. How secure is that? Ever give your credit card number over the phone to make a purchase from a mail-order house? Or to secure a reservation at a hotel? Who's to say that the employees you're speaking with are honest? Or that your phone is not tapped? Or theirs? I shop on the Internet; I may get ripped off. What's my liability? Fifty bucks -- same as the other scenarios I've described. That's in my credit agreement with the card issuer. So why all the hoopla? Is credit card fraud significantly more prevalent on the Internet than in other modes of purchasing? Or is the banking industry whipping up hysteria among purchasers to curb fraud losses? Was the work of those graduate students funded by someone -- directly or indirectly? If so, by whom? A banking consortium? A high-tech company working on some patentable security scheme? Robert Herrig Peekskill, N.Y., Sept. 19,1995. The writer is a systems consultant.